THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
NEWS
WEDNESDAY, MARCH 26, 2008
CAMPUS
Chapter makes comeback
Zeta Beta Tau plans to return after 10-year absence
BY CALEB SOMMERVILLE csommerville@kansan.com
A Jewish fraternity will join the 40 Greek houses at the University of Kansas within the next few years.
Zeta Beta Tau, a fraternity based in Indianapolis, is coming back to the University after being absent for about ten years. It closed its first house in the late 1990s because of a lack of general leadership in the chapter.
ZBT was invited to start a new chapter by KU's Interfraternity Council and the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life in September 2007.
Associate Executive Director Laurence Bolotin said the fraternity had begun to receive requests to start a new ZBT chapter on campus, so it has begun to reconnect with campus and alumni.
ZBT does not have a house yet, but Bolotin said that the fraternity had other more pressing priorities.
"Our hope would be that we can build up a strong membership base so that a house could be located in the following year," Bolotin said.
Bolotin hopes to recruit about 20-30 "founding fathers" before the next academic year.
The fraternity was founded at Columbia University in New York by Richard J. H. Gottheil in 1898. It was started as the first North American Jewish fraternity because Jewish students were often not allowed to join existing fraternities.
The KU chapter was started in the 1950s, and the strongest years here were in the 1980s, Bolotin said.
ZBT became a non-pledging fraternity in 1989, in an effort to eliminate hazing. The fraternity had problems with pledges being treated like "second-class citizens," so they created the "Brotherhood Program."
The program emphasized earning membership every day while in the organization, as opposed to earning the membership over the course of only one semester.
"Because our founders knew what it felt like to be discriminated against, it is important to ZBT that we always provide a welcoming environment to any college male of good moral character who is passionate about our mission as a Jewish fraternity," Bolotin said.
The fraternity also experienced a lower level of interest in the 1970s because of the Vietnam conflict and the anti-establishment feelings that were popular during that time.
ZBT has about 110,000 members at more than 80 campuses in both the U.S. and Canada.
Another Jewish fraternity already exists on campus. Drew Eltis, president of Alpha Epsilon Pi, said having another Jewish fraternity on campus was a good thing for the Jewish community.
"We're looking forward to the growing Jewish population on campus," Eltis said.
Edited by Matt Hirschfeld
HEALTH
Study shows that premature babies have higher death rates
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Most preemies grow up to have good health and normal reproduction, but the researchers found heightened risks compared with babies born at full term from 1967 to 1988. The findings add to known consequences of prematurity such as lung problems, disabilities, mental retardation and school delays.
CHICAGO — The largest-ever study of the long-term consequences of premature birth finds that children born early have higher death rates in childhood and are more likely to be childless in adulthood.
Experts called the research significant because it followed 1.2 million Norwegian births over decades. It also raises questions about future risks for even titer babies saved today by modern medicine.
U. S. rates of premature births climbed steadily during the past two decades reaching an estimated 12.8 percent of births in 2006, government figures show. More than 540,000 babies were born premature that year. Fertility treatments that result in multiple births and older mothers contributed to the rise.
New drugs and therapies first used widely in the 1990s now save smaller and sicker babies. So the babies in the study may have been healthier, on average, than children born premature in recent years, experts said.
"Are we improving their survival but at the expense of significant problems down the road?" asked study leader Geeta Swamy of Duke University Medical Center.
"In the United States, there is an epidemic of preterm birth, and prevention is absolutely critical," said Alan Fleischman of the March of Dimes. He was not involved in the study.
Fleischman said prevention efforts include hormone treatment for women with a history of giving premature birth, avoiding inducing labor unless medically necessary and reducing the number of embryos implanted at one time during fertility treatments.
In the study, appearing in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association, more than 60,000 Norwegian children were born premature, about 5 percent overall. Only single births were included.
As expected, babies born early were more likely to die during the first year of life compared with babies born at term.
Surprisingly, their increased risk of death persisted as they aged.
The children who were born five to nine weeks early (28 to 32 weeks into the pregnancy) showed a doubled risk of death from ages 1 to 5 compared with children born at normal term. (The overall risk of death was low: 33 of the 5,880 children in the premature group died.)
When the researchers looked at boys and girls separately, they found a stronger link in boys between premature birth and higher death rates in childhood.
The causes of childhood deaths are still being analyzed, but birth defects and childhood cancers played a role, Swamy said.
In adulthood, other differences showed up. Prematurity was linked to lower levels of education and more childlessness in both men and women in a subset of more than 580,000 births from 1967 through 1976.
Women who were preemies had a higher risk of giving birth to premature babies themselves. The risk of next-generation premature births increased with the severity of prematurity in the mothers.
As in other studies, there were more premature births among single mothers and those with less education.
GENEALOGY
Norway's homogenous population and its universal access to medical care make the findings a "best case scenario" said Wanda Barfield of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. She coauthored an accompanying editorial in the journal.
In the United States, premature birth rates among black mothers are higher than among white mothers, she said.
The findings suggest people may want to tell their doctors if they were born early.
Research uncovers Democratic presidential candidates' distant celebrity relatives
ASSOCIATED PRESS
BOSTON — This could make for one odd family reunion: Barack Obama is a distant cousin of actor Brad Pitt, and Hillary Rodham Clinton is related to Pitt's girlfriend, Angelina Jolie.
Researchers at the New England Historic Genealogical Society found some remarkable family connections for the three presidential candidates — Democratic rivals Obama and Clinton, and Republican John McCain.
"You'd think with all that singing talent in the family she'd be able to carry a tune," Clinton's senior adviser Philippe Reines said. "But
Clinton, who is of French-Canadian descent on her mother's side, is also a distant cousin of singers Madonna, Celine Dion and Alanis Morissette. Obama, the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya, can call six U.S. presidents, including George W. Bush, his cousins. McCain is a sixth cousin of first lady Laura Bush.
now it makes much more sense how she snagged a Grammy."
Clinton won for best spoken word Grammy in 1997 for "It Takes a Village." Obama also won a Grammy in that category this year for the audio version of his book, "The Audacity Of Hope: Thoughts On Reclaiming The American Dream."
Obama has a prolific presidential lineage that features Democrats and Republicans. His distant cousins include President George W. Bush and his father, George H.W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry S. Truman and James Madison. Other Obama cousins include Vice President Dick Cheney, British Prime Minister Sir
Genealogist Christopher Child said that while the candidates often focus on pointing out differences between them, their ancestry shows they are more alike than they think.
"It shows that lots of different people can be related, people you wouldn't necessarily expect," Child said.
Winston Churchill and Civil War General Robert E. Lee.
Child has spent the last three years tracing the candidates' genealogy, along with senior research scholar Gary Boyd Roberts, author of the 1989 book, "Ancestors of American Presidents."
"His kinships are across the political spectrum," Child said.
Clinton's distant cousins include beatnik author Jack Kerouac and Camilla Parker-Bowles, wife of Prince Charles of England.
McCain's ancestry was more difficult to trace because records on his relatives were not as complete as records for the families of Obama and Clinton, Child said.
Obama and President Bush are 10th cousins, once removed, linked by Samuel Hinkley of Cape Cod, who died in 1662.
Pitt and Obama are ninth cousins, linked by Edwin Hickman, who died in Virginia in 1769. Clinton and Jolie are ninth cousins, twice removed, both related to Jean Cusson who died in St. Sulpice, Quebec, in 1718.
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In a statement before the event, Reagan said she typically waits until after the GOP convention to announce her support but she decided to do so now because it is clear the Republican Party has chosen its nominee.
who might help him win over critical conservative voters.
"John McCain has been a good friend for over thirty years," Reagan said. "My husband and I first came to know him as a returning Vietnam War POW, and were impressed by the courage he had shown through his terrible ordeal. I believe John's record and experience have prepared him well to be our next president."
ELECTION
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nancy Reagan endorses McCain
SANTA ANA, Calif. — Former first lady Nancy Reagan planned to endorse John McCain for president on Tuesday, as the Arizona senator continued to collect the backing of leading Republicans
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